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News, Politics and Culture for the Unimpaired.

The Wrath of Khan

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This week, newly elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan addressed Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Islamic immigration. It should have gone something like this:

Khan: ‘Let us into your country.’

Trump: ‘I’d rather not. Some of you people are violent extremists who seek our destruction.’

Khan: ‘You better let us in. If you don’t, some of our people may become violent and seek your destruction.’

Trump: ‘Like I said…’

Instead, Trump offered to make an exception in the case of Khan.

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And if Khan’s self incriminating logic and affiliation with Islamic extremists wasn’t enough, he then went on to put himself firmly in the camp of the ‘enemies of humanity’ by promising to help Hillary Clinton get elected as President of the United States. Read More 

We won’t even bother addressing his ideologically inconsistent and naive comments about being a Muslim and a feminist, as we’ve already covered that fallacy in a previous article.

 

Jihadis Gearing Up For A Busy Summer

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The Independent reports on a plot to attack a number of European soft targets by an Islamist cell based in Italy. The discovery came after police arrested a number of suspects in a counter terrorism operation. The targets included Rome’s Collosseum and London’s Canary Wharf.  Read More

As the Telegraph also reports:

There are also fears that a huge ‘fan zone’ to be set up near the Eiffel Tower during the Euro 2016 football Championship will “offer terrorists a chance for a massacre,” according to a former French police chief.

Frédéric Péchenard, who headed the national police until 2012, urged the authorities to scrap plans for the Paris fan zone, where spectators will gather to watch matches on giant screens. Read Full Article

No shit! Besides European, and in particular, Turkish beach resorts (read more), the softest target this summer must be the Euro 2016 football tournament in ethnically fractured France, with the England v Russia game on June 11th no doubt top of the Jihadi hit list.

 

 

Socialism in Venezuela: Eating Cats & Dogs

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In the socialist paradise that is contemporary Venezuela, they have attained a state of revolutionary utopia where people are eating cats and dogs to stay alive.

The situation in Venezuela is reaching all out chaos, as crippling socialist policies have resulted in a devastating power and food shortage, as well as looming political instability. This is a country with more oil than Saudi Arabia.

Ramón Muchacho, Mayor of Chacao in Caracas, said the streets of the capital of Venezuela are filled with people killing animals for food.

Through Twitter, Muchacho reported that in Venezuela, it is a “painful reality” that people “hunt cats, dogs and pigeons” to ease their hunger. People are also reportedly gathering vegetables from the ground and trash to eat as well.

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No One Could Have Predicted That (Part 1: Austria)

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Angela Merkel’s Summer of Love has claimed its first victim, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.

The BBC reports:

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has resigned after losing the support of Social Democratic party colleagues. Mr Faymann came to power in 2008 but has faced criticism within his party since the far right won the first round of presidential elections last month.

Earlier this year, he yielded to pressure from his coalition partner, the conservative People’s Party, to cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum in Austria after the arrival in 2015 of more than 90,000 asylum seekers.

That decision prompted criticism from trade unionists and the SPO’s youth wing who clearly felt that 90,000 wasn’t anywhere near enough to rupture the fabric of Austrian society.

There was further pressure on Mr Faymann after far-right Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer won the first round of the presidential election a fortnight ago. The green candidate was second while Mr Faymann’s Social Democrats and the centre-right People’s Party failed to make it to the run-off vote on 22 May.

To be fair, Mr Faymann seems like a decent man caught between the inflexible ideology of those on the fringes of his own party and the practical reality of mass immigration.

Of course no one could have predicted that the open door immigration policy adopted last summer would lead to right wing parties doing well during elections or the fall of national leaders.

We should consider Mr Faymann the first of many.

 

 

Finally, London Gets the Mayor It Deserves

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There is a saying attributed to Robert Kennedy, that goes: ‘Every society get the criminals it deserves.’ Equally... it goes on, ‘every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.’ Somewhere between these two points lies the election of Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London last week.

Sadie Khan is the first Muslim mayor of London, which in isolation should be no big deal. The issue comes when you apply this fact to the broader picture of what is happening in Europe, and when of course, people learn that Khan has shared the stage with Islamic extremists.

Again, this should not be really be a controversial revelation. Every Muslim public figure in Britain probably knows a number of Islamic extremists with whom they are on first name terms – that’s the nature of the beast. He probably bumps into extremists on a daily basis; waves to Islamists from across the street both knowingly and unknowingly. To him, these are regular Muslims. Not your ‘Uncle Tom’ secular Muslims as he describes – the ones who contemptuously put the law of the land before the Mohammed’s teachings of conquest and subjugation.

Khan’s rap sheet is pretty damning. Here is just a snap shot:

In 2004, Khan was the chief legal advisor to the Muslim Council of Britain, a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Khan defended Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born Islamist who has been banned from entering the UK. Al-Qaradawi has expressed support for Hamas suicide bombings against Israel: “It’s not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of Allah.” According to Khan, however, “Quotes attributed to this man may or may not be true.”

Also in 2004, Khan shared a platform with a half-dozen Islamic extremists in London at a political meeting where women were told to use a separate entrance. One of the speakers was Azzam Tamimi, who has said he wants Israel destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state. Another speaker was Daud Abdullah, who has led boycotts of Holocaust Memorial Day. Yet another speaker was Ibrahim Hewitt, a Muslim hardliner who believes that adulterers should be “stoned to death.”

In 2006, Khan attended a mass rally in Trafalgar Square to protest the publication of cartoons of Mohammed by Western newspapers. One of those present at the rally was Tamimi, who told Sky News: “The publication of these cartoons will cause the world to tremble. Fire will be throughout the world if they don’t stop.” Khan defended Tamimi: “Speakers can get carried away but they are just flowery words.”

In 2008, Khan gave a speech at the Global Peace and Unity Conference, an event organized by the Islam Channel, which has been censured repeatedly by British media regulators for extremism. Members of the audience were filmed flying the black flag of jihad while Khan was speaking.

Also in 2008, Khan wrote that Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union in order to prove that the bloc is not a “Christian Club” that discriminates against Muslims.   Full Rap Sheet

Bumbling tussle-haired Eurosceptic former Mayor, Boris Johnson never realistically or convincingly represented the capital and its values. The people of London seem quite comfortable with the creeping Balkanization of Europe, even going out of their way to promote such progressive policies, despite overwhelming evidence of their failure.

Finally, they are getting the mayor they deserve.

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The House Of Saud Has 10 Years

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Today’s exclusive report in the Daily Telegraph that Saudi Arabia is to sell off part of its nationalized oil industry only lends credence to what we have been saying for some time: the kingdom is running out of oil and will face ruin within ten years.

As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph reports:

Saudi Arabia is planning a three-way foreign listing in London, Hong Kong, and New York for the record-smashing privatisation of its $2.5 trillion oil giant Aramco, anchored on a triad of interlocking ties with three foreign energy companies.

The moves come amid a profound shake-up of the kingdom’s energy strategy, with the dismissal of veteran oil minister Ali al-Naimi over the weekend. 

Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince aims to clear away a clutter of subsidies, pushing through a Thatcherite shake-up of what still remains a medieval economic structure. The plans draw on a McKinsey report, “Beyond Oil”, which warned that the kingdom is heading for bankruptcy if it fails to grasp the nettle.

The vast IPO is the spearhead of his “2030 Vision” to break the country’s “addiction” to oil and diversify, using the proceeds for an investment spree covering everything from car plants to weapons production, petrochemicals, and tourism. “We will not allow our country ever to be at the mercy of commodity price volatility,” he says.

While the Saudis are shocked by the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Donald Trump, they are more disturbed by legislation in Congress that would let survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks file lawsuits for damages against Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia keeps its estimated oil reserves a close state secret, and hasn’t updated projections since the 1970’s.

The vast Ghawar field –with capacity of 5m barrels a day – dates back to the 1940s, with no major finds in the kingdom since the 1960s. Yet declared reserves have been strangely stable for decades.

It looks like the kingdom’s royal elite are starting to diversify while the getting is still good. They have a restive and increasingly militant population they keep sedate with oil wealth and a craddle-to-grave welfare state.

Yet there are mounting concerns over the fragility of the Saudi state itself as the Middle East is engulfed by a Sunni-Shia battle for dominance, all too like Europe’s Thirty Year War.

Aramco’s oil reserves are largely in the Shia regions of the Eastern Province. This is a combustible zone after the execution of the Shia sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in January for civil protest, prompting outrage and vows for revenge.

Couldn’t happen to nicer people, we agree. Especially as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the #1 exporter of toxic Islamist doctrine and propaganda on the planet; it would be sweetly poetic if that same extremist ideology they’ve been pimping around the world for decades provided the fertile soil for their own downfall.

However, the geopolitical ramifications of the kingdom either starting to running out of oil or falling victim to an Islamic revolution (most likely both in close succession), would be cataclysmic.

Without oil, Saudi Arabia quickly becomes Yemen or Somalia.

 

The Progressive Aggregation Fallacy with Pat Condell

An Aggregation Fallacy is the support for two or more causes that are in opposition to each other that co-exist within an ideology. Currently the best example of this is the support within progressive liberalism for third way feminism and LGBT rights at the same time as support for Islamic immigration.

It is both ideologically and practically impossible to champion the causes of the former, whilst also supporting the latter. We should not need to point out this logical inconsistency, but hey, that’s the world we live in.

In his book, The Uses of Pessimism, political philosopher, Roger Scruton explains the idea of an aggregation fallacy as follows:

‘When the French Revolutionaries crafted their famous slogan, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ they were in a state of exaltation that prevented them from seeing any fault in it. In their eyes liberty was good, equality was good and fraternity was good, so the combination was thrice good. That’s like saying lobster is good, chocolate is good and ketchup is good, so lobster cooked in chocolate and ketchup is thrice good.

The French had to go through a painful process of discovery before realizing what they had embarked upon. Even when Robespierre fanatically promoted ‘the despotism of liberty’ it did not dawn on the Jacobins that they were committed to a contradiction: the goal of equality requires the destruction of liberty.

The thinking here embodies a fallacy that is replicated whenever the desire for good things impetuously cancels any attempt to understand the connections between them… As a result, they add one good thing in an ever expanding wish-list. And because each good has been taken from its context and transferred to an imaginary world, the result is almost certain to involve aims that cannot advance together.’

Warning: pointing out progressive aggregation fallacies might lead to being labelled a fascist or a racist.

Merkel Pleads Insanity

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It would appear, and as reported, in the light of recent figures suggesting that over 60% of Germans feel that Islam has no place in Germany, the open border immigration policies that Angela Merkel’s government drove home to Germans last autumn have started to have their obvious and predictable consequences.

Obvious and predictable to all but her it would seem. Now she is furiously back peddling as she realizes that her drunken policies might not only destroy her country, but also her career.

With her country’s political landscape shifting significantly before her, Angela Merkel has now put her political hat on in order to survive politically in Germany.

As France 24 reports, Angela Merkel is urging European Leaders to protect the EU’s external borders or risk a “return to nationalism.” Merkel said the “freedom of movement” in Europe is at stake as it deals with the worst migration crisis since WWII.

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And it does pose the very valid question: If other people could see the folly of last summer’s open door policy, why weren’t those with infinitely greater resources and knowledge aware of the mistakes they were making at the time?

Without question, back-peddling on such a serious failure should be viewed with nothing but contempt. Of course she should pay with her political career, but given the culturally invasive nature of the seeds they have sown, leaders like Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande & the E.U. policy commissioners – who continue to coerce sovereign nations into taking refugee quotas they do not want – should now be looking in the rear view mirror for charges of treason appearing on the horizon.

Brexit: The Corbyn Effect

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The Telegraph reports:

Jeremy Corbyn has been forced to abandon plans to give a speech calling for all Turkish citizens to gain access to the UK amid fears that it could push Britain out of the European Union.

Corbyn was clearly oblivious to the fact that his endorsement of the E.U. move to award Turkey visa free travel for its citizens might not help matters in the up coming British referendum on E.U. membership.

Sources inside the leader’s office are understood to have intervened to get the speech scrapped, triggering a furious row.

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We appreciate that Jeremy Corbyn lives within an ideological bubble with little concern for political practicalities. It does still however beg the question: how clueless can you be?

As Surely As Night Follows Day

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We don’t really consider ourselves very clever people. Our greatest skill is probably being able to predict what will happen when nations embark upon clearly ridiculous policies grounded in ideological insanity, and even then it has more to do with not being afflicted by the culture of such madness.

So when Germany drunkenly declared that it would give a home to 800,000 refugees, it was fairly easy to predict that the Summer of Love would turn into the Winter of Rape – we just didn’t think that it would be the same year. After all, guests usually have to get comfortable before they start molesting the host.

As support for Pegida, then Germany’s anti-Muslim AfD Party started to grow, it’s not like anyone but the ideologically insane could claim that they hadn’t see it coming.

Now it appears that support For Anti-Muslim AfD has hit a record high as 60% agree that, “Islam Does Not Belong In Germany.”

This from ZeroHedge:

In yet another poll for Bild newspaper by the Insa Institute, an astonishing 61% of Germans agreed that Islam does not belong in Germany. This result further explains AfD’s surge in popularity, as the AfD reportedly has a section in its new party program called “Islam is not part of Germany”, which is a position that 92% of its supporters agree with.

With the AfD only behind SPD by 5 points in the polls, it won’t be long until the AfD is able to close the gap and become Germany’s second most popular party. An increasingly powerful AfD who shares the same anti-Muslim sentiment as a growing number of German voters means that the political landscape in Germany is changing rapidly, and significantly.

No one could have predicted that. I mean, what did they think people were going to do?

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